In 2017, Canada unveiled the $125-million Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, coordinated by CIFAR, that triggered a number of independent AI activities at many universities and research centres throughout Canada. For example, in April 2018, the University of Waterloo launched the Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute, which is an undertaking that brings researchers from across the university’s diverse range of disciplines together to advance both fundamental and applied AI research with a two pronged approach of AI for Industry and AI for Social Good. This is one of many smaller-scale AI initiatives that have sprung up throughout Canada’s academic community in association with various partners, and all this primarily as a result of the recent explosion in pure and applied AI research and the high-profile that AI is getting from governments around the world.
Canada’s relative strengths are in AI research and talent. Canada is ranked seventh globally in artificial intelligence by total article share, and boasts two universities in the top-50 globally in artificial intelligence ranked by total article share (University of Toronto, #17, and McGill University, #31) from 2015-2019, according to Nature.
However, when it comes to AI commercialization, Canadian institutions accounted for less than 1% of the total patented inventions filed by institutions globally in 2017, while China and the U.S. assignees cumulatively accounted for 65% of total AI patented inventions filed according to ISED. 284 Canadian institutions filed 618 patents inventions in AI between 1998-2017.
Global Advantage Consulting Group has the expertise and past project experience to detail the level of impact of AI on you and your organization, and the funding programs and mechanisms in place that you can leverage.
